Janet Poppendieck.  Breadlines Knee-Deep in Wheat: Food Assistance in the Great Depression.  University of California Press, 2014.

I wrote the Foreword to this updated and expanded edition of Jan Poppendieck’s 1986 classic.

What a gift to have this new edition of Breadlines Knee-Deep in Wheat, too long out of print, and badly missed…Food assistance is what this book is about.  Breadlines tells the story of how the U.S. government, confronted with destitution during the Great Depression of the 1930s, first became involved in feeding the hungry.

Government agencies attempted to resolve two pressing social and political problems with one stroke:  breadlines, the unemployment-induced poverty that forced great masses of people to line up for handouts of free food, and knee-deep in wheat, shorthand for the great bounty of American agriculture that was available at the time, but unaffordable and allowed to rot or intentionally destroyed.

The solution: distribute surplus commodities to the poor while also—and politically far more important—providing farmers with a paying outlet for what they produced.   The earlier chapters of Breadlines focus on the politics—as played out in disputes between members of the Roosevelt administration—that led to a critical shift in the focus of food distribution programs.  Once aimed at hunger relief, the programs ended up aimed at protecting the income of farmers.

As a result, the hunger problem remained unsolved…. Breadlines has much to teach us about the historical basis of today’s politics of hunger, welfare, and agriculture policy.

Janet Poppendieck deserves much praise for writing this book and bringing it up to date, and so does University of California Press for producing this most welcome new edition.

George Faisan sent me this photo of a package of Perdue’s USDA process-verified chicken.

I wrote about this chicken in 2011.

At the time, I pointed out that broilers are usually raised on grain, are not usually fed animal by-products, and are never fed hormones or steroids.  And cage-free usually means something like this:

The USDA does indeed have a process verification program .  As I explained in 2011, it is a marketing program that allows producers to make claims and create certification logos.

My 2011 remarks elicited a response from a Perdue official implying that the only antibiotic used in their chickens is one used to deal with coccidiosis, and it is not used in humans.  He said Perdue is a family-owned company trying hard to do this right.

My remarks also elicited a response from Tyson, a Perdue competitor:

Dr. Nestle is correct that Perdue’s claims are marketing hype. The process verified label is confusing to consumers because it implies that Perdue’s practices are more humane than other producers and that other producers raise broilers in cages. Neither of those claims are true. Tyson filed a petition, supported by consumer survey research, requesting that USDA revoke that label.

The Tyson petition objected to Perdue’s use of Process Verification on the basis that its labels are misleading.

USDA disagreed.  It defended the Process Verified Program as

a voluntary, user-fee program that is open to all companies…to gain a marketing advantage for their products.  Perdue’s competitors are free to participate in the program and obtain the same marketing advantage.

In 2011, Perdue was claiming that its chickens were “humanely raised.”  It’s not doing that anymore.

Backyard chickens, anyone?

This ad was in last Sunday’s New York Times.  It appears again today with blurbs added.

Full disclosure: I’m one of the many people interviewed for the film and appear in three 10-second clips.

Fed Up! is a stunningly hard-hitting exposé of the food industry’s role in promoting unhealthy diets and childhood obesity.  It spares nothing in showing the devastating effects of obesity on kids (I found those parts painful to watch).

The film’s main message is that the food industry, in collaboration with government, is responsible for creating a food environment that promotes poor health.

It is especially tough on food company marketing and industry-sponsored research.

It is also—I think, unfortunately—tough on Michelle Obama and her Let’s Move! campaign.

Mrs. Obama is not the problem.  The food industry’s marketing and co-opting practices are the problem.

We can debate whether it was wise or useful for Let’s Move! to partner with the food industry, but the campaign has done much to bring issues of childhood obesity to public attention.

It’s ironic that the accomplishments of Let’s Move!—the White House garden, the Healthy Hunger-Free Act of 2010, the new school food nutrition standards, the new nutrition standards for WIC, and the new food label, for example—are at this very moment under fierce attack by food companies, their trade associations, and their friends in Congress.

With that said, the film is well worth seeing.  Don’t miss it.  Get your friends to see it.  Let the debates begin.

How to see Fed Up!

• Watch the trailer here.
• Find out where it’s playing here.
• Share it on social media here.
• See Katie Couric’s excellent ABC News interview here.
• Read the New York Times review here.

As for the debate, please enjoy:

• The Grocery Manufacturers Association statement about Fed Up! and its Q and A in response to the film
• International Food Information Council review
• The National Confectioners Association statement

Additions

• Jerry Hagstrom on the lack of “policy muscle”
• Nancy Huenegarth’s review in Food Safety News
• The food industry’s stealth campaign against the film
• Michele Simon’s take on the film.
• IFIC’s new point-by-point rebuttal of scientific statements in the film.
• Mark Bittman on the most important movie ever made.
• Food Policy Action — Real Fed Up Facts (in response to GMA)

Bernard Lavallée, Le nutritionniste urbain, has supplied an English translation of the French graphic I posted a couple of days ago:

He’s done other food graphics.  You can see them at this site.

Thanks for sending!

USDA deserves a thank-you note: the agency announced it is awarding $25 million in grants to help schools buy kitchen equipment.  Yes!

The grants are a response to a report by the Kids’ Safe and Healthful Foods Project – a collaboration with The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  The report found that 88% of school districts nationwide need at least one piece of equipment, and 55% need infrastructure upgrades.

You can send a quick note of thanks to the USDA Office of Communications at oc.news@usda.gov.

Thanks are needed because nutrition standards for school meals are under intense pressure from:

• Lobbyists for foods that will be excluded under the new standards
• The School Nutrition Association which is heavily supported by companies sellling foods to school meals programs
• A Congress that loves to micromanage federal food programs (see yesterday’s post).

School meals need help, but not that kind.

You would think that excluding white potatoes in the WIC package (because evidence shows that WIC participants already eat plenty of white potatoes) would be small potatoes, but not to the Maine potato lobby.

It has induced Congress to intervene on behalf of Maine potatoes.  And, according to Politico it seems to have the votes.

As I’ve said in a couple of earlier posts, this looks to me like Congressional unraveling of nutritional gains for the WIC program.

Rumors say that Republican congressional staff have told WIC officials that Congress intends to go after the program just as it went after SNAP, and that this time WIC “won’t get off easy.”

WIC is demonstrably successful in improving the nutritional status of participating women, infants, and children.

The WIC package—the foods that are eligible to be purchased with WIC vouchers—is based on science-based recommendations of the Institute of Medicine.

Politico quotes Robert Greenstein of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities:

Members of Congress often say they want poverty programs to be more effective…Here, they are taking what’s widely agreed to be one of the most effective programs and making it less effective in order to serve parochial interests…If Congress begins mandating what foods to include and exclude in WIC irrespective of the scientific findings…the floodgates will be open in the years ahead for other legislators to demand inclusion of other products that their states produce and that may generate substantial campaign contributions.

How about writing your congressional representatives and telling them to maintain the integrity of the WIC program.  If your representatives heard from enough constituents about this issue, they might not vote for it.

Even a quick e-mail would help.

Addition: Here’s the letter from senators to USDA Secretary Vilsack.

This is too much fun not to share.  Merci á Bernard Lavallée pour le Tweet:

Sometimes I have some sympathy for the makers of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS).  They get such bad publicity.

The most recent example occurred at the White House during the annual Easter Egg Roll, and involved the First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS), Michelle Obama.

Meet Marc Murphy, a chef, drizzling honey over a fruit salad:

MURPHY: “Honey is a great way to sweeten things, it is sort of a natural sweetener.”

FLOTUS: “Why is honey better than sugar?”

MURPHY: “Our bodies can deal with honey…The high-fructose corn syrup is a little harder to … I don’t think our bodies know what do with that yet.”

FLOTUS: “Did you hear that?  Our bodies don’t know what to do with high-fructose corn syrup. So we don’t need it.”

OK class.  It’s time for a lesson in basic carbohydrate biochemistry.

• The sugars in honey are glucose and fructose.
• The sugars in HFCS are glucose and fructose.
• Table sugar is glucose and fructose stuck together, but quickly unstuck by enzymes.

The body knows perfectly well what to do with glucose and fructose, no matter where it comes from.

Now meet John Bode, the new president of The Corn Refiners Association:

We applaud First Lady Michelle Obama’s commendable work to educate the public about nutrition and healthy diets… It is most unfortunate that she was misinformed about how the body processes caloric sweeteners, including high fructose corn syrup…Years of scientific research have shown that the body metabolizes high fructose corn syrup similar to table sugar and honey.

If you’ve been following this blog for a long time, you may recall that I have a little history with the Corn Refiners.

Bizarrely, I was caught up in their lawsuit with the Sugar Association.

And I was not particularly pleased to find several of my public comments about carbohydrate biochemistry displayed on the Corn Refiners website.  I did not want them used in support of the group’s ultimately unsuccessful proposal to change the name of HFCS to corn sugar.

I asked to have the quotes removed.  The response: “Your quotes are published and in the public domain.  If you don’t want us to use them, take us to court.”

I let that one go.

Enter John Bode, the Corn Refiners’ new president and CEO.  As it happens, I became acquainted with Mr. Bode in the late 1980s when he was Assistant Secretary of Agriculture and I was working in the Department of Health and Human Services (yes, the Reagan administration).

To my pleasant surprise, he recently wrote me “warm greetings, after many years.”  His note assured me that my request to have the quotes removed would be respected and that they would soon disappear.  And so they have, except for a couple in some archived press releases.

Score one for John Bode.

Mr. Bode has his work cut out for him.  He has to teach the world carbohydrate biochemistry, restore public acceptance of HFCS, defend against Sugar Association lawsuits, stop the Corn Refiners from being so litigious, and do some fence-mending, all at the same time.

And he must do all this in an era when everyone would be better off eating a lot less sugar of any kind, HFCS included.